ERIKA ALINO MAICA MANGILIMAN

MARK BRYAN APOLINAR ANRI OHASHI

ABEGAIL AURELIO MARY CHRISTINE JOY ORTEGA
JESSIE REY BAGANG JEWEL NICOLE SALAS
EDELMARC BALDONASA JOHN CARLO SICAT
CHRISTINE JOY BRIONES MARC BENEDICT TAGLE
OLIVIA DELA CRUZ JERELYN TALION
ERICA DENNISE GATCHALIAN ROSE TICSAY
CLAUDINE JO LA MADRID CHINO PAULO VALERIO
JENNIE-LYN MAGTOTO ABIGAIL VEGA
CARL JAROLD MALLARI KYLE VIRAY

MR. ANTHONY RAMOS

Download a research article from ScienceDirect relating to a conducted study on OSS/FS usability. Respond to the question
(minimum of 300 words: How can developers increase the usability of health-related OSS/FS?

The intersection of data science and supply chain management is receiving increased attention across
the globe. This research presented an open-source analytical tool that can be used to quantitatively populate a
Kraljic Matrix, thus providing organizations with a standard and robust method for enabling strategic supplier
management. Open source is a software development method that makes source code available to a large
community that participates in development by following flexible processes and communicating via the
Internet. Open source encourages collaboration among vendors, providers, and developers to build ever-
changing and improving infrastructure technology by sharing source code. This collaborative strategy has the
potential to bring technology innovations into the healthcare space much more quickly than independent
development. Healthcare organizations need to understand what open source is and how it is significant to
future health IT infrastructure innovations that will save money and help clinicians treat patients more
efficiently.

Free Open Source Software (FOSS) is software that is made available along with source code as a
distinctive feature. It is often available at no cost. Users can use and distribute the software. And if they so
wish, they can study the source code and modify it to suit their needs. Open Source Software/ Free Software
(OSS/FS) programs are “programs whose licenses give users the freedom to run the program for any purpose,
to study and modify the program, and to redistribute copies of either the original or modified program without
having to pay royalties to previous developers” The Free Software movement focuses on moral and ethical
issues relating to the freedom of users to use, study, modify and redistribute software. It is important to
recognize that a wide range of OSS solutions are already in use in health care, generally consisting of technical
tools and business applications. Ongoing collaborative development efforts to create many new OSS health care
software applications for the 21st century such as personal health records (PHR), health information exchange
(HIE), genomic biorepositories, and other solutions are also well underway. These OSS products are being
released under one or more open source license arrangements that allow health care providers to acquire and
use these tools at no cost.

Developers can increase the usability of health-related OSS/FS by enumerating the software systems
and indicating their provisions of each support feature. Availability of a discussion group to share ideas,
questions and answer is also a good idea that can immediately provide a first resort when encountering
problems such as those undocumented issues during the development process. The same is true for mailing
lists where subscribed developers can receive up-to-date news as well as recent discussion threads. For new
developers in particular, a developer guide is often essential to explain core modules, coding styles and similar
aspects special for the target project. Comments density is also an established quality indicator for OSS. They
can rely on the analysis of the open source directory such as www.ohloh.net/ to estimate the adequacy of code
comments.

In terms of software development and licensing there are 2 kinds of software; proprietary software
such as Microsoft Explorer web browser and OSS (open source software) such as Firefox web browser. OSS or
FS programs are programs whose licences give users the freedom to run the program for any purpose, to study
and modify the program and to redistribute copies of either original or modified program (without having to pay
royalties to previous developers).Open source code has found its place in health IT infrastructure supported by
organisations such as open source electronic health record Alliance (OSEHRA) to serve organisations
electronic health records, medical practice management medical information systems and more Open source
software benefits Healthcare organisations in many ways being financial. Open source software does not
charge licensing fees for the code freeing up funds for other IT initiatives.uses requirements could thus be
taken by OSS developers community as a key issue to improve usability of their projects . Role of HCI and
usability expert cannot be undetermined in software development . Gradual and incremental introduction of
advanced features and software makes users feel more comfortable.

Many organizations have requirements for long-term sustainable software systems and associated
digital assets. The availability of Open Source software (OSS) has been identified as a strategy for implementing
long-term sustainable software systems. It also presses a challenge on software developers on how to keep up
the functionality and usability of health-related OSS / FS with the ongoing progress and developments of
technology. Further development of the OSS / FS will be beneficial by being a unique platform that enlists
contributions from various stakeholders toward creating a common good. The continuous dynamics of OSS
development are potential solutions for the low adoption of technology in healthcare. In particular the low cost
of acquisition and maintenance, the high degree of customizability, and the community of users are important
advantages of OS. However, the lack of understanding of OSS model and the unavailability of trusty support
providers are unique challenges facing OSS / FS.

The implementation and consideration of adopting the OSS/FS in the healthcare community have been
uncommon especially in underdeveloped countries and it is probably because of lack of knowledge about it and
also the inability to have access to this above-mentioned software. In my opinion, developers first need to
broaden the availability of it while using it with ease. Moreover, developers can increase the usability of health-
related OSS/FS in the means of creating or upgrading online collaborative workspace wherein nurses and
users are capable to contribute in data and information exchanging or sharing – this innovation not only
improve the feature group discussion, mend challenges but it also widens the portfolio of health-related
information sources. It is also best to fix and maintain the consistency and clarity, in terms of its uses, even if is
it developed, in order to sustain the easy-to-use software and preserve the dependable understanding of the
users. Overall, increasing the usability of these health-related OSS/FS while optimizing its use can help in
reaching the potential peak of its quality.

References:

Zaidan. A. et.al. (2013, October 24). Evaluation and selection of open- source EMR software packages based on
integrated AHP and TOPSIS. ScienceDirect.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1532046414002627

Safadi. H. et.al. (2014, November 7). Open-source health information technology: A case study of electronic
medical record. ScienceDirect. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S221188371400847

Gamalielsson. J. Lundell. B. (2012, October 19). Sustainability of Open Source software communities beyond a
fork: How and why has the LibreOffice project evolved?. ScienceDirect.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164121213002744

Boehmke. B. et.al. (2019, July 23). A data science and open source software approach to analytics for strategic
sourcing. ScienceDirect. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0268401219309867